You might have seen his work at the theatre, but now you can catch the visual artwork of filmmaker Tim Burton in his first-ever retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art this fall. NY1's Shazia Khan filed the following report.

Whimsical imagination has driven filmmaker Tim Burton's movies, in which offbeat characters like "Edward Scissorhands" have become part of the American cinematic experience. And soon, audiences will get a more up close and personal look into Burton's creative world.

In an upcoming exhibition, the Museum of Modern Art will present the first-ever retrospective of Burton's works, following the development of his talent from childhood to the present, as he's currently working on a 3-D version of Lewis Carroll's "Alice In Wonderland."

"Tim Burton really is a contemporary artist, he's a modern artist. I call him a 'pop surrealist' artist," says MoMA curator Ron Magliozzi. "And he was a person whose talents developed from the '60s to the present time."

More than 700 works, including drawings, photographs, puppets and sculptures will be on view, many for the first time. MoMA curators went through tens of thousands of pieces of Burton's artwork before making the final cut.

"I can't think of any other artist, with Tim's reputation and level of accomplishment, an artist who is so well-known - he is a brand name - and yet people know so little of the work that he's done off-screen," says Magliozzi.

Burton says sharing his so-called "visual diary" is a surreal experience.

Burton: It's like kind of having your laundry hanging up or something. It's like, 'Oh, he wears this kind of underwear,' something very strange about it. I haven't looked at it since I did it.

Shazia Khan: And what was it like to revisit that work?

Burton: Well, it's exciting, kind of re-energizes you. It's not something you want to do every day, kind of go back and look at everything, but after never doing it before, it kind of re-energized me and kind of made me excited.

All of Burton's 14 feature films, including "The Nightmare Before Christmas," "Mars Attacks" and "Sweeney Todd," will be screened alongside his student films.

While his work is often described as "dark," Burton sees it in a different light.

"I never thought of it as dark, I always thought it was very light in a certain way. So I guess everybody's perception of light and dark is very different," he says. "But to me, it always kind of seemed light-hearted, but maybe a little bit of darkness to it."

Tim Burton opens at MoMA on November 22 and will be on view through the end of April 2010.